Toothpaste

I’ve been squeezing minute amounts of toothpaste out of my little travel-size tube for days now.

I keep forgetting to go buy more, and recently I had myself convinced that I could make do for perhaps even a few more weeks if I only used a few grams of paste at a time.

Then I opened my bathroom cabinet.
Contained therein was an unopened, full size tube of Crest.

My toothpaste made me think of grace.

It may not be the most elegant analogy in the world, but I was reminded of how often I try to limit God’s grace in my life. I try not to bother God for his time. I try to keep to myself, not asking for too much. There are so many people who need much more than I do! Why should I deserve to approach God with my needs?

I struggle so hard to remember that he has called me his son, an heir to the riches of grace won for me by Christ. He’s always got time for me, and wants me to have life more abundantly.

In other words, I’ve always got a full thing of toothpaste in God’s bathroom.
You’re free to use that illustration.

The Platinum Rule?

The “Golden Rule” has been handed down by religious and philosophical thinkers in one form or another for thousands of years.  It’s often pointed out that while most versions of the rule contain a negative instruction–”Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want done to you”– Jesus gave a positive version, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (not actually found in the Bible, but a similar statement is issued in Matthew 7:12).

However, while that’s a very important idea, repeated several times in the Bible, Jesus gave what I think is an even greater commandment, or maybe a more emphatic rephrasing of the first one.

After Jesus ate the Passover meal with his apostles the night before he was crucified, he washed each one’s feet as a sign of his love and sacrifice for them.  He told them that it was also an example of how they were to love others:

For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.

John 13:15

So we are not just to treat others how we want to be treated. 

We should do unto others as Christ has done unto us.

But what does that mean?

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

God’s love for us was selfless and total.  Selfless because he showed us love at the very moment we despised him; there was no reason for him to favor us.  Total because he gave everything for his beloved people.

How on earth are we supposed to love people like that?!

The short answer is, we can’t.

The fuller answer is that through the continuing work of the Spirit in us, God makes us more Christlike over time, enabling us to love more like he first loved us.  But even then, when we love someone totally and selflessly, we owe our motivation and ability to do so to the same Spirit.

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate [to be] conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Romans 8:29

Warped and Knotty

I spent another day, among other things, in the wood shop honing my skills.  Today’s project was a small table for our back porch.  This one, made out of scrap pine, is sort of a practice run for a larger al fresco dining table I’ll make out of cedar.  Don’t practice on the expensive stuff.

There are several joints, cuts, etc I was unable to do with my current tools.  I’ve realized this more and more- now that I have some tools to work with, I’m more aware of my abilities and limitations, and my need (my wife would disagree with me here) for more advanced, specific, expensive tools.  A table saw for ripping.  A router for chamfering and dadoes.  Chisels for mortising.  A drill press for boring.

I’m happy to bide my time and save up for my hobby, but today’s project got me thinking about how like grace this tool thing is.

The more grace God gives me, the more I become aware of how much I need– really need–that grace.

I had no idea how warped and knotty the recesses of my soul were until God started to work with me: simple, rough cuts eliminating a lot of material at first, moving on to more complicated and time-consuming work.  But in the end I know that my heart will be a thing of beauty that glorifies the one who made it.  And I hope it’ll look a lot better than my table.

The Dark Side

The Internet Has a Dark Side

On Friday NPR aired an interview with Leonard Kleinrock, the man who invented what would become the Internet on its 40th anniversary.  In the interview, Kleinrock expressed his surprise at how the network, originally trust-based and open, developed what NPR dubbed a “dark side.”

“[T]his open, trusted, available, shared environment, [was] the culture, the ethics of the early Internet. And then when we approach the late ’80s and the early ’90s and spam, and viruses, and pornography and eventually the identity theft and the fraud, and the botnets and the denial of service we see today[.]

Mr. Kleinrock’s innocence is charming, but I have to ask: What did he expect?  The internet was created and run by humans, who, as a general rule, will pervert everything they can to their own uses as soon as they can get away with it.  Look what we’ve done with our civil liberties.  How I mistreat the people closest to me.  How we crucified the one who came to save us from our sins.

When a close female relative of mine first got into gardening, she had very little success.  So little, in fact, that my brother and I joked that she had a “brown thumb” that killed everything she planted.

We’re all afflicted with a similar condition.  The power of self-improvement championed by Aristotle, the Renaissance and the Internet-bearing ’60s is an illusion.  We can’t do anything good on our own!  The more we try to improve our condition by our own power, through virtue, medicine, or the Internet, the more we’re tempted to forget how truly great is our need for grace.  In our self-embrace this Midas touch has begun to consume us, and against it all our striving would be losing without the incomparable grace of Christ.

And because of the unexpected, unsurpassed, unrequitable gift of God, we have hope far beyond our own power.

And so does my mom’s garden.

I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. John 15:5

I forgot to remember to forget

While I was driving in the car this morning, I put on an old song by Shaun Groves I haven’t listened to in a while.  Although I used to put that CD on almost every day, and at one point had the words memorized, I drew a total blank after three words!  But next time I commit the words to memory I’m sure I’ll remember them.   This seems to be the case in anything I try to learn: I have to learn something (a fact, song lyrics, a noun declension) and forget it a number of times before it’s really good and in there.  It also seems that the more complex or mysterious the thing is, the more times I have to repeat this process to understand it.

So how many times do I have to learn and forget that I’m covered by grace?  Why do I still, despite how many times I’ve been around this block, wallow in self-pity and despair when I sin?  Will I ever really understand the freedom Christ has won for me?

Maybe we’re still in school, with the Holy Spirit patiently reviewing yesterday’s lesson at the chalkboard.  I can’t wait till I can pass my graduation test.